One Secret of 'The Secret'

By Chris Crouch

Several years ago a short video went viral and spread the word throughout the land that you could pretty much have anything you want in life, including health, wealth and happiness, if you simply ask the universe for it in the right way. In a nutshell, it was yet another of the periodic Wallace Wattle-like rediscoveries of the power of positive thinking and creative visualization. In this case, the discovery was categorized as a so-called “Secret” that you too could gain access to for the price of the video.

As with most faddish offerings, some people swear by the wisdom of The Secret and others swear about the ridiculousness of The Secret. My thoughts are that although the lessons of the video and book are a bit far-fetched at times, it might be a good idea to pay attention to some of the ideas that are somewhat supported by brain research.

The main idea of The Secret focuses on something the author calls The Law of Attraction. This law, in turn, seems to be an updated version of the phenomena that whatever you think about expands in your life. That actually makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how the brain works.

You see, we are bombarded with sensory input on an ongoing basis. If we had to take in all the sensory stimuli and evaluate it, we would likely go nuts somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes after we get up every day. So, the brain filters out information considered unimportant and only allows input that is considered important to pass through and be noticed. This sophisticated brain-input filtering system explains one of the secrets of The Secret.

Think of the neural network that filters incoming stimuli as your “what should I notice today” brain system. You have probably bought a new car and subsequently noticed that you see the same car everywhere – same make, same model, same color and same everything. This is because your brain has, in effect, been programmed to notice them. This “noticing programming” works equally as well for attracting tangible items (such as identical cars) and experiential things (such as positive or negative life experiences).

Let’s say you want to attract a certain group of clients into your business life. You can use what The Secret refers to as The Law of Attraction to accomplish this. One common suggestion among many self-help books is to put your important goals in writing. As it turns out, the kinesthetic act of writing down a goal is one of the best ways to program your brain to notice input related to the goal. So, you write down the names of the clients you desire to attract. They might not show up like duplicate copies of your new car, but you will be more likely to notice opportunities and things related to them.

So, what do you want to attract? Here’s a secret – put it in some form of writing.